Castle Shade

by Laurie R. King

  It should have been funny. It was anything but.

  I spoke into Holmes’ ear. “Something he learned during the evening has sent him off the edge.”

  “I imagine he discovered that yet another attempt at stirring up trouble has failed to raise so much as a rumour.”

  Hex bags and poisoned grain were one thing, but to plot, plan, and carry out a pair of assaults, first on a guest and then on a maid—yet have no one talking about pearl necklaces and evil Queens?

  “Holmes,” I said, “a person held by an idée fixe can become truly deranged when he is thwarted.”

  The doctor had left off his assault on the motorcar and moved to its back door, reaching inside for something. This door, shut with less violence, remained closed, and the doctor stalked through the light beams towards the lodge. Both of us strained to make out the object he carried, but only when he paused to unlock the door did it come into view: thin, long, rigid—stick-like, but with a gleam of metal at the end. Then the door opened and he was gone.

  “What was that?” I hissed.

  “It looked remarkably like…a carving fork.”

  My hand shot up to the wound on my neck. “My God, Holmes—we’ve driven the man to murder!”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  And then we were running again. Holmes drew his gun as he flew—around the motor, through the head-lamps, towards our wild shadow-figures on the front wall, up the steps and diving through the open door, ducking to either side in case the doctor was waiting there, gun out…

  Nothing happened. Holmes reached out and eased the front door nearly shut, to block some of the blinding light. My eyes slowly adjusted. We were in a large room with heavy furniture and animal heads mounted on its panelled walls. Holmes moved on silent feet towards a door in the back wall. I followed, my throwing knife at the ready.

  The corridor smelled of dust and mildew, but also of fresh spirits: the doctor’s rage had been fed by drink. The dust was years thick on the hallway runners, testifying to the long abandonment of the hunting lodge. The doors on either side of the corridor were shut—then suddenly a low light gave shape to our surroundings, its source from around a corner. A rattle of keys came, and we broke into a run, gun extended as Holmes cleared the corner. The figure in the doorway was just taking a step forward. I shouted his name—but he kept moving, and Holmes’ shot tugged at the tails of his overcoat.

  Holmes darted to the far side of the doorway, but no return shots came. Instead, a shouted demand—in Roumanian, but the meaning was clear: Who is that?

  I put my finger to my lips, telling Holmes that he should keep quiet. “This is Mrs Holmes, Doctor. We, er, met the other day in Bran.” Twice, in fact.

  Silence fell. Then, in a tone of wonder and exasperation, a low Roumanian mutter that did not require translation to interpret it as, Dear God, some women don’t know when to quit. He then shifted to English.

  “What the deuce do you want here? How did you find me?”

  “Doctor, it is over.”

  “Nothing is over. Not even this young woman’s life, unless you want to be stupid.”

  “I’m very glad to hear she’s still alive,” I said. That much was certainly true.

  “Of course she’s alive, what do you think I am?” He sounded, of all things, offended. But perhaps the irony of the protest reached through the madness, because threat returned. “And if you want her to remain alive, you will come in slowly and place the gun on the floor.”

  Holmes shook his head, but I slipped my knife away, then sidled up to the door and edged one eye around the frame.

  This had been a servant’s room, small, minimally furnished, and with a tiny window, now boarded up. The walls were unpainted, the floorboards bare, yet the rusty metal bed-frame was thickly draped with woollen blankets and feather pillows. A paraffin lamp hung from a bracket. Beneath it, a table held the room’s comforts: matches for the light, a dozen or so English-language books, and food and drink with the Fortnum & Mason label.

  The cheese was untouched, the biscuits had been opened, and the bottle of Malvern Water was half-empty.

  But all that detail came via peripheral vision, because my gaze was locked on the man himself.

  He stood on the far side of the narrow bed, bent over. His right hand held the object we had seen in the head-lamps: it was indeed a carving fork, its curving prongs nearly six inches long, two sharp points that precisely matched the holes in my neck.

  And, in the neck of Gabriela Stoica.

  The girl was unconscious, drugged by the drink he had brought earlier in the evening. The doctor’s left hand was beneath her lolling head, turning her upper body slightly towards him. On her neck, clearly displayed, were three pairs of stab-marks, angry and smeared with dried blood.

  A match for the marks hidden under the neck of my shirt.

  Every one of which was well clear of any lethal vein or artery.

  But not where the fork’s prongs rested now.

  “One small push,” the doctor said, “and I puncture her carotid artery. She will die in seconds. Come in, and put down the gun.”

  I studied his stance, the way his garments hung, and drew back into the corridor. Holmes was shaking his head vehemently, but he had not seen what I had. I mouthed silently the words He has no gun, then gave an emphatic nod at the one that he held. I stepped into view again, pausing in the doorway to prop my left shoulder against the frame. Out of his sight, I extended my left hand, palm up, towards Holmes. After a moment, I felt the touch of metal, and wrapped my fingers around the gun.

  “Doctor, it really is over.”

  “The gun.”

  The man’s hands were steady, despite rage and drink. If I turned the gun on him, even the tiniest jerk would open Gabriela’s throat. So I took two steps into the room and set the weapon on the floor, nudging it away with my foot.

  “And now your husband.”

  “My husband isn’t—”

  “Please do not think I will not kill the child. I am, as you can see, a man who is running low on choices. If you wish Miss Stoica to live, Mr Holmes, you will join your wife.”

  “I don’t see a gun,” I said over my shoulder. Meaning that, even if the doctor had one, the brief delay of retrieving it would let us seize our own first.

  Holmes stepped out beside me.

  “Now, the two of you go into the next room and turn the key in the lock. When you have slid it back under the door, I will take this away from Gabriela’s neck, and I will leave. By the time you break down the door, I will be gone. Before you reach help, I will be at the border.”

  I eyed the door. It was narrow but sturdy, its lock old but recently greased. He saw me looking. “I am afraid it will not smell very nice in there. I did not have a chance to empty the pot before you came.”

  Having to shelter in an impromptu lavatory was the least of my concerns. His hand twitched, just a fraction. A trickle of blood started down the girl’s throat.

  “What’s to stop you from taking the gun and killing us all?” I said.

  I was mostly stalling for time—an automatic gesture, because no help was on its way—but to my astonishment, I could see him consider the matter. And what was more, he came up with a solution. “You keep the gun. But remove the bullets first, please. Oh—and you have a knife, in that clever sheath in your boot. Leave that here, too.”

  I looked at Holmes, and saw his face clearly for the first time. Another man would have been shaking with fury. He stood absolutely still, every muscle taut and his eyes like ice, and I knew that had it not been for those two sharp points of steel in the doctor’s hand, he would cross the room and tear the man to pieces. Instead, he watched the thin scarlet line creeping down the white skin. Then he stood away from me, fixing me first with his gaze, then looking pointedly at the door we had come through. I read his message
as if he had said it in words: If the doctor pulls a gun, you are the one to flee and regroup.

  I took a deep breath, gave him a tiny nod of agreement, and we both dropped to our heels—me to pull the knife from my boot, Holmes to take up the revolver, loosing its cylinder to let the bullets bounce across the dusty floorboards. He then pointed the weapon at the wall and pulled the trigger eight times, to demonstrate its emptiness.

  He stood. I flicked the knife across the room to leave it quivering in the wall, then stood as well.

  The prongs of the fork pressed a degree less firmly, and he did not instantly reach into a pocket for a gun, so I decided to see if he would talk.

  “Tell me why, Doctor. You care for your people, you have a lovely home in Brașov, you have money—why do you want to spend all your time and most of your money to repair Castle Bran? You could build a hospital instead. A school—ten schools.”

  I had not perceived madness in the man before, but it was there now, in the gleam of his eyes and the desperation in his voice. “Because Bran is mine. Because my father lost what he had, and my grandfather lost most of his, and for generations the Mikó family has been cheated of what is ours, back to the days when my forefather was the Prince of Transylvania. It should have been mine—would have been, but for a lost marriage license. And instead, the city fathers look at the cost of maintaining it and push it off on the first foreign harlot who will take it. Instead of offering it to me, instead of saying, ‘Some man who loves the people and wants only to serve them will make this a centre of life for our corner of the province’—instead of that, they throw it in the hands of a woman who plays with it and dresses it up as she would a doll’s house. And when she tires of it, she will sell it to some wealthy play-boy or give it to her worthless son, and the outsiders will come with their fast cars and their big noise, and the people of Bran will only suffer again.”

  “The Queen does seem to love the people,” I ventured.

  “The Queen!” he spat. “The woman loves admirers, she loves the colourful peasants, she loves to look from her motorcar windows and see their farms and their children and their poverty.”

  I kept a close eye on the two points, but despite his fury, they had not pressed further, so I did. “Could you not educate her? Couldn’t you—”

  “To what purpose? They gave her my castle, and thanks to you, I will not get it back. Well, if I cannot have it, neither will she.” And with this chilling pronouncement, the doctor nodded at the side door. “When the key has been slid out from under the door, I will leave.”

  The fact that he had not summoned a gun of his own encouraged me to believe him—although if we had any other option, I would have taken that. But Gabriela was no longer in danger, and the door would give way eventually. Even if he had his gun in the motorcar and intended to come back with it, he would have to step through that narrow door to use it, giving one or the other of us a chance to overcome him.

  And the man was too unbalanced for common sense. He might well kill the girl, if we did not give him some distance.

  So we did. Holmes first, with the empty weapon, then me. Holmes closed the door and felt for the key. The mechanism turned. He pulled the key out, bent, and slid it under the door.

  Instantly, footsteps crossed the outer room, followed by the sound of metal kicked across the floor. The steps continued, then seemed to stop. But there was no sound of Gabriela’s prison door shutting, and the faintest of vibrations testified to his continued passage down the carpeted hallway. In a moment, more distant heels against wood, and a minute later the faraway noise of a starting engine.

  Holmes’ clothing rustled, and I heard the click of the gun’s catch, followed by the faint rasp of brass against steel.

  I recognised the sound, having loaded that gun a hundred times. “You managed to palm one of the bullets?”

  “The day Sherlock Holmes can’t fool a doctor with sleight-of-hand is the day Sherlock Holmes retires to Monaco.”

  “When we get out of here,” I said, “I know you’re angry, but don’t kill him. You can hurt him, though. Hurting is fine.”

  He shot me a glance of dark humour. “Stand away, this could be messy.”

  Blowing a lock mechanism from a door can be more than messy—it can take off a finger, if done carelessly.

  My husband is never careless.

  The bullet damaged the mechanism enough that a few kicks sent the door crashing back. The noise half-woke the girl—she was fine, but for the new puncture on her neck, so I murmured reassurances until her eyes drifted shut. I tugged the blankets over her shoulder—although with thoughts of that motor-cycle, I removed one of them and tucked it under my arm. Knife in boot, I headed for the door—then patted my pockets, found the handful of hard sweets I had bought half a lifetime before, and left them on the small table for her, grabbing up one of her pillows in exchange.

  Then I ran.

  The motorcar was gone and so was Holmes, but I followed him with my torch burning, through the lodge and down the drive, catching him up while he was still wrestling the motor-cycle back onto the road.

  “His tyre-tracks showed him going back the way he came,” I told him. I placed the cushion on the hard metal rack, tucked up my feet and wrapped the blanket around us as far as it would reach, and held on tight.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  This late, the roads were deserted—but only of cars, carts, and human beings. In the first two miles, Holmes swerved to avoid a large mouse, two rabbits, and a cat. At the same time, our head-lamp bore witness to the motorcar’s heedless progress, with one spray of glistening blood and the freshly flattened shape of something within a drift of feathers. A car as heavy as the shooting-brake would sail blithely through anything smaller than a cow; for a motor-cycle, a rabbit was dangerous, and a large fox could kill us outright.

  Our speed edged off.

  “Don’t slow,” I shouted. “We can’t let him get away.”

  He cocked back his head to call, “He doesn’t know we’re after him. He has no reason to hurry.”

  Isn’t madness reason enough, I thought. But I shrugged down into the blanket and let the wind whip past. We were north of Brașov, therefore almost the exact centre of Roumania—a fact reflected on maps, with five roads coming together in the dot that was the town. Some of those were actual, metalled roadways, others largely aspirational, but since Bucharest was both the capital and the nearest city, its road would be well maintained. And it lay in the direction the doctor had chosen.

  I spoke into his ear. “Will he stop at his house first?”

  The motion of his shoulders indicated that he was no more certain of the answer than I was. But because the mansion was just off this road, we took the risk of coming to a halt at the drive and turning off the motor.

  No lights showing, no dust in the air over the drive. No sounds of an idling engine.

  Holmes kicked our motor back into life and returned us to the road.

  At the outskirts of Brașov, again I uncurled from the relative shelter of his back to shout. “If the police department is open, we could ask them to wire ahead. Tell them a man is plotting to kill the Queen.”

  He nodded, and slowed outside the building, but it was as dark as one might expect, from a small town in the still hours. He shifted up again.

  “So,” I said. “Where is he headed?”

  “To the Queen,” he called back.

  “He said he was going to one of the borders.”

  “ ‘If I cannot have it, neither will she.’ ”

  “He’d choose trying to get at the Queen over making a clean escape?”

  “I believe so.”

  I clung to him as the sleeping town flitted past, and considered the possibility of second-guessing a madman. I’d thought that as we spoke with the doctor, he’d seemed to regain some balance—enough to sugg
est he would choose a life forward rather than a final act and a blaze of glory. After all, his resources were enormous, the world at his feet. All he had to do was slip away from Roumania, and give up Bran to his enemy, the Queen.

  What was the man thinking, there on the road ahead of us? Was he consumed by the need for revenge and the end of things, or had he seen the appeal of acceptance and a life elsewhere? Or was he simply speeding through the night, as blindly unaware of options as he was of the rabbits that dashed under his tyres? Waiting for a sleeping bullock to loom in his head-lamps, or for the hands on the wheel to choose their goal…

  Holmes was right: that all-or-nothing threat of his sounded more real than the idea of heading for a border. However, that still did not decide us.

  “He knows she’s in Sinaia,” I told him.

  He sat back, letting the engine slow. “Does he?”

  “Pretty sure. He had passengers in the motorcar for a time, they were talking. But Holmes, that threat could be aimed at Bran itself rather than Marie.”

  He drifted to a halt at a cross-roads, beneath one of the town’s street-lamps, and dropped his feet to the ground. There he sat, head bent, as deep in thought as I was.

  Bran, or Marie? The Queen’s beloved doll-house, or a direct assault on a royal palace filled with guards?

  If I cannot have it, neither will she could also mean burning the object of his desire to the ground.

  Castle Bran. Yes, it had stone walls, a ridiculously steep approach, and the tiniest of windows overlooking the drive—from the outside, an act of pyromania would require fire-arrows or an aeroplane. But considering that most of the servants would be out searching for Gabriela, a man with a match could walk through the door with little difficulty.

  I felt Holmes come to a decision, but he turned on the seat and shoved his goggles up so he could look at me.